In a typical football game, each team has 11 players on the field and at least 50 more suited up on the sidelines. That’s a lot of people to manage! The players all need to have highly developed specialties, and football coaches are always on the lookout for athletes who can fill these roles perfectly.

When you’re hiring, experience is very important. However, just because someone has an amazing array of skills doesn’t mean they can fill the right spot on your roster – you need to make sure they will work well with the rest of your first string.

Here are some “office players” you should be looking for to fill out your team, and how you can use social media to find them:

• The quarterback: Of course you need a quarterback! The QB runs plays, touches the ball on nearly every play and is responsible for making decisions on the field. You need to hire employees who you trust to make decisions. You don’t want them running to you for every little thing – hire employees who thrive on autonomy. Strong, decisive leaders will only serve to make you look good as the boss. Quarterbacks are also great communicators. They convey the necessary information to their teammates. How can you find yourself a good QB? One way is to find out how the individual communicates. In addition to interviewing candidates, check them out on social media platforms. Are their LinkedIn profiles clear and easy to follow? Do they have a lot of connections, or are their profiles empty and sad? If a Twitter profile has a decent number of followers; interesting, thoughtful tweets; and a good description, it may be a sign that the individual can communicate effectively in the workplace.
• Offensive specialists: The offensive players on a football team are responsible for gaining as many yards as they can on a play. They need to move the ball down the field without interference. Every office needs go-getters with lots of initiative, no matter the business. People who have the foresight to see how they can gain ground with clients and any project you toss their way are great to have in the office huddle. They are not afraid to try any avenue to gain traction. How can you find them? A good tactic might be to follow their lead and play some offense. Hunt candidates down on Twitter, using keyword searches that relate to a position and/or tweet details to people who might be a fit for the role. Search LinkedIn for the right experience and connect with people who meet your criteria. It’s a great way to find passive job seekers who may be open to opportunities that come their way.
• Defensive specialists: On the field, the role of the defensive players is pretty simple –prevent the other team from scoring. In office terms, you need defensive specialists to keep up with what your competitors are doing. Are your rivals encroaching on your territory? Your office defensive specialists will know their every move. They are experts at reading industry trends, “listening” to what is being said about you, and transforming those findings into strategic insights that shape the way you communicate both online and offline. To find them, step into their skill set. If you’re using social media for recruitment, pay close attention. What types of posts and tweets are working for you? Let the top performers shape your content plan, and reach out with the most engaging posts in your arsenal to help draw in recruits.
• Special teams: In football, special teams assist during kicking plays. While they may play other roles on offense or defense during the game, they have specially honed skills that help the team score extra points. Look for these types of players to round out your office roster. Office special teams players may be great at writing copy in a flash, designing an infographic, or knowing just what to say to soothe an angry client. They’re willing to step outside their role and do what’s needed to get the job done. To find those special teams players, consider expanding outside the major social networks into more niche ones. Looking for a fantastic designer? You might want to check out sites like Faveup.com, where designers show off their work. There are social communities for lots of professions. Even if they don’t have a special network, they may have a Facebook group or forum where you can connect.

When you’re drafting your office team, keep in mind that they all need to work together toward a common goal. What other types of “office players” or attributes are you looking for to complete your roster?

Chances are high that any salesperson you have met since 1992 can recite lines, if not the entire script, from Glengarry Glen Ross.  David Mamet’s 1984 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning play was adapted to film in 1992 with the likes of Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey, Al Pacino and Alec Baldwin giving way to memorable quotes, and providing fodder for film buffs and sales trainers alike.

Despite the origin of the term – whether or not it was Mamet – Baldwin’s character brings the concept of the “ABCs of sales” to new life and gives entrance to modern sales vocabulary in one of the film’s most memorable scenes: Always Be Closing.  

As personal online networks like Facebook grow to more than 500 million users and professional online networks like LinkedIn hit audience levels of more than 100 million, it’s evident that when fueled by technology, connectivity is easier and more accessible than ever.  The agents in Glengarry Glen Ross may not have been concerned with the relationships they were building (or not building) in always-be-closing deals; however, as the economy and job market recover today, solidifying relationships between individuals and organizations is crucial for pipelining future talent.  

Whether your organization consists of five people or you’re part of the Fortune 500, social platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, have opened up opportunities to target and attract new candidate streams that are otherwise inaccessible. Despite your industry, user-generated outlets like YouTube and WordPress have given your audiences the ability to sing your praises or sink your battleship with their reviews of your product, process, staff, and service. 

As recruitment evolves via emerging technologies, how do you make the most of opportunities to push your brand forward? Put on spin on Baldwin’s insightful speech, making your goal to “Always Be Connecting.”

Because everyone has their 2 cents
Just as the adage goes – without being crude – opinions are like certain body parts, and everyone has them.  No matter who you are or where you come from, you will think a specific way about a place, interest, topic, etc. Opinions can be formed through first- or secondhand experiences, education, and –although we might not like to admit it – even stereotypes and biases. 

Sites like Glassdoor.com, Jobitorial.com, and Careerbliss.com provide platforms for past and present employees as well as interviewees to provide reviews of your organization.  If a candidate has a bad experience and feels as though your interviewing process was unprofessional, warranted or not, the candidate has highly popular websites on which to post that opinion.  And with 64 percent of candidates researching companies before even applying to a position, overwhelming amounts of negative 2 cents can add up to serious recruitment challenges, whereas glowing employment reviews can propel recruitment efforts.

Because it’s human nature
In just seven short years, Facebook has grown to be the world’s largest online social network, with more than 700 billion minutes spent on the site each month and a 50 percent daily log-in rate. Despite your 2 cents about Facebook, not many can argue that the phenomenon is akin to who we are as human beings – creatures with a disposition to connect to others, validate our thoughts and perhaps self-worth through those that we know, and possibly even play out our innate voyeuristic and narcissistic tendencies. (OK, so this might be a stretch. But keep in mind that photo sharing and photo viewing are top activities on the site en-masse, and the average Facebook user changes their profile picture more than 18 times a year – three times the amount they did only a couple of years ago.)

Because everyone is a passive job seeker
In the last six months, I have consulted a handful of Fortune 500 organizations that are launching social media strategies aimed at employment branding for the first time.  These organizations have been active in the social space for years, but they are just now beginning to use the platforms for recruitment and employment branding campaigns.  Just a few weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal reported a similar trend in which some boutique firms have conducted almost twice the amount of employer branding analyses than in years prior. 

Regardless of whether people will actually label themselves “active” or “passive” job seekers, it’s safe to assume that at almost any given point in time, everyone, no matter how happy they are with their position and organization, is a passive jobseeker. People are typically taught and encouraged to pursue greater opportunities and not accept complacency. Managers don’t accept mediocre performance, and people shouldn’t accept mediocrity in their careers. No matter how sufficed one might be in their career, opportunities for advancement, increases in pay or benefits, better work-life balances, shorter commuting times, and more flexible hours can all be motivating factors for a happy and high-performing individual to move to another organization. As most recruiters and hiring managers know, talent is hard to find and equally hard to keep. 

As the job market recovers, expect to see more and more companies marketing their organization almost as a product to candidates – a product that is desired, offers value beyond a paycheck and has many other happy customers (in the form of current employees). 

The future of recruitment truly does transform Mamet and Baldwin’s “Always Be Closing” concept to “Always Be Connecting.”  Social media and employment branding are now part of the strategies for pipelining talent post-recession. Note that social media is not going to take the place of email marketing, targeted advertising, out of home advertising, print, TV, radio or any other platform on which your company currently sees recruitment success.  Instead, it’s a supplement – an ongoing effort. Social media takes strategy and helps forms the right path for conversations.  And while it – like people – may not be 100 percent controllable – social media gives your organization and the individuals at your organization the opportunity to create connections. Through it, you can actually show your company’s value proposition as well as give your employees – real people with unique stories – the opportunity to share how they contribute to your company’s success. It’s these stories from these brand advocates that will give life, reason and passion to why they’re working for your organization and why others should, too.  

As a company with a growing employment brand, you’ll be able to participate in online conversations where appropriate, engage current and future employees and enthusiasts, provide a platform of information and education for your targeted audience to discuss topics of interest, and truly begin a long-term and evolving strategy for your employment value proposition.   

How do you plan to enhance your recruitment efforts through the “Always Be Connecting” principle? Share your thoughts below!

GUEST CONTIBUTOR: Co-Authored by Carisa Miklusak and Keshet Lemberg
This post originally appeared on Carissa’s Blog – Making Sense of the Social Media Jungle. An inquisitive problem solver by nature, Carisa Miklusak is an entrepreneur, consultant and speaker by trade. Connect with Carisa’s social media profiles, on Twitter and Facebook or join her LinkedIn Resource Community.

When it comes to finding the best employee for a position, many organizations are now turning to alternate routes. Our complex and competitive business landscape has created an imperative need for a well positioned employment brand. Businesses traditionally relied upon industry contacts, expertise, job boards, and third-party recruiters to uncover the best match, but today the majority of corporations are also embracing social media as a leading recruiting tool.

In order to successfully utilize social media as part of a recruiting strategy, it is first necessary to understand how your target audience is using LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites to land jobs. The most obvious reason job seekers use social media is to source companies for open positions. For example, TwitJobSearch is a social media job search engine that candidates rely upon as a resource to find open positions that are not always posted on job boards or company sites. Moreover, job seekers use online media to verse themselves in the culture of a target company. Job seekers study company pages on social media sites to gather insight about the company’s culture via photos, videos, and information provided by the corporation. Companies such as MTV Networks have successfully built their presence on social media sites by encouraging users to ask questions, offer info, and seek advice. Through its Facebook page – MTV Networks Careers – the entertainment leader sparks engagement with users, responds to questions, and posts open positions.

Lured by news, rumors, and trends, people are drawn to online media sites by the appeal of industry chatter. Professionals with social media know-how realize that industry chatter is an extremely valuable resource for gaining new and important information that can make them better candidates in the interview process. Job seekers in search of firsthand user-to-user information can easily connect with current and ex-employees through social media outlets. A directory of people organized by area of expertise, profession, and hundreds of other categories is available to the public on Twellow, the yellow pages for Twitter. LinkedIn provides similar information. Candidates also use social media sites to scope out recruiters and hiring managers to determine if they are a compatible match, and to gain helpful information for potential interviews and conversations. To find excellent advice that is pertinent to a specific situation, job seekers follow and connect with job search experts in the social media sphere. Many such experts exist offering daily advice. Ideas, tips, leads, news, informative articles and best practices can be accessed at the touch of a finger by using Twellow’s job search to find people to follow who send out helpful information. The vast array of social media tools now makes it possible for bold job seekers to attempt to engineer their own opportunities instead of waiting to be uncovered by recruiters and hiring managers. Some follow employees at their target company until news of a fitting open position arises while others network their way into new positions by engaging in strategic conversations with potential leads.

By understanding why job seekers use social media to land jobs, companies can leverage their activity to more effectively and efficiently recruit new employees. When using social media as part of a recruiting strategy, it is important to create a consistent and automated method for uncovering the social identity of job seekers. Sites like TiVo makes job opportunities accessible across major social media platforms so that anyone can post, direct message or update their status. Corporations can benefit from the opportunity to build relationships with candidates in their target audiences by maintaining an official company presence on social media sites. By following relevant people and igniting conversations, organizations can begin to create a healthy level of influence over their brand – a clear best practices in the social media sphere. Moreover, companies can determine what type of information fuels the jobseekers’ interest by listening to the candidates and then provide that content on their social media platforms. In order to avoid an influx of irrelevant offers to their job posts, however, it is necessary for businesses to refine their searches by specifically targeting candidates by location, career interests, and other top candidate profile credentials.

Through social media platforms, companies can connect to talent anywhere in the world and access personal information about top industry leaders. Social media is as valuable resource for organizations of all kinds and sizes to build employment brands and make the right candidate connections. It is equally as productive for job seekers, creating a platform where companies and talent alike can connect directly with multiple stakeholders in their target audience.

Liberty Tax Service has been the recipient of several awards in the past couple years – which of these are you most proud of and why?

We’re proud of all of them, but I think the one that we’re most proud of is one that we just received locally from Inside Business magazine, calling Liberty Tax Service “one of the best places to work in Hampton Roads” (which is the Tidewater Region of Virginia). To be named the best place to work in an entire metropolitan region was really special to us because we really embrace our culture, and we are proud to be recognized as a great place to work. Our rankings in Entrepreneur Magazine also stand out because that’s an industry-wide franchise publication that many people refer to when they’re looking to purchase a franchise opportunity. To be recognized by them as one of the fastest growing franchise opportunities – and one of the best out of 500 opportunities – is good for the franchise system in general.

The Liberty Tax Service franchise opportunity is #9 on the fastest growing franchises list of the 2010 Entrepreneur “Franchise 500.” To what do you attribute your growth?

I think the number one thing is the experience of the management team. Our CEO, John Hewitt, founded Jackson Hewitt Tax Service in 1982 and grew that to a very large franchise system, a system that today still bears his name. I, myself, am one of the founders of Liberty Tax Service, and I have over 20 years of experience in the income tax industry. When we decided to start another income tax company, we made a bunch of rules: to learn by our mistakes, to help foster the culture, and to promote people to jobs that they were good at. I think that the reason that we’ve been so successful is because we have been able to hire the right people, make them happy and then bring on great franchisees.

How would you describe your philosophy as it relates to people and their impact on your daily business?

I believe that people should be left to do their jobs. I don’t believe that [micro management] fosters creativity and excitement in the workplace. My personal philosophy is to hire the right people, give them their job description and what their key result areas are, and then let them go ahead and figure out how they are going to achieve those results. One of the principles of our company is, “Mistakes are a wise person’s education.” We believe that nobody’s perfect, and you’re going to make mistakes, and your mistake is like an education. We [as managers] are here to guide you, but you’ve got some freedoms and some flexibility to make your own decisions on how you’re going to run your business.

How do you engage and relate to your people? What experiences or lessons influence your leadership style?

Many folks who work with me have been with me for a long time, from the beginning of starting Liberty Tax Service. We are, as a group and as a department, very tight. There’s a lot of laughing that goes on, but when the work needs to get done, we push to be the best and to really get results because everybody is proud to be a part of the marketing department. If I attribute anything to my management style, it’s the fact that I let people do their jobs. I truly believe that you can have fun every single minute you’re at work if you enjoy what you’re doing.

How do people affect your business, particularly as it relates to your revenue stream?

We manage our employees though the position-results description method: Our employees set a goal for what their job is, and then there are key result areas that they agree with their manager are “the things that I am going to achieve this year.” We make sure that each key result area is measurable, but we also make sure that they are attainable. We work together throughout the year to make sure that everybody is on track. It’s a really good way to kind of put your goals down on paper and then track if you are achieving them.

Some people believe HR to be the only department with a responsibility for the organization’s people, yet you’ve made your overall talent strategy a priority in your role. Tell me about that.

I think our company operates quite a bit differently from some other large companies to attract good people. We have a referral program that motivates our employees and our franchisees to seek out good people. Our HR department is not a traditional HR department. They help us with issues, but when it comes to the actual hiring process, it is really left up to the managers to find and interview those people and make the hiring decision. We look for the right people, we bring them on, we test them in different positions, and we find the right job for them. It really boils down to this: you’ve got to hire for attitude and then train for skill. If somebody doesn’t have the right attitude, it doesn’t matter what job you put them in, they are not going to perform. We like to hire people who are happy, positive, and willing to stretch and to learn.

I understand that Liberty Tax Service doesn’t advertise nationally, and you’ve relied heavily on guerilla marketing with wavers and franchisees generating most of the buzz about your brand in the market. How have you used social media to extend your non-traditional marketing to reach a wider audience, centralize marketing efforts, and preserve your brand?

We’re new to social media. We knew that we needed to be involved in that, but we weren’t really sure how to do it. The first thing we did was hire an online brand manager who has experience in that environment. We’ve relied pretty heavily on the folks at CareerBuilder to help guide us through that and give us ideas on how we can better position ourselves on the web with social media.

We don’t believe in traditional national advertising. Television has lost a lot of its effectiveness. We continue have a very high percentage increase in business every year, and I attribute it to the fact that we’re doing non-traditional things, whereas our competitors are still acting very traditionally when it comes to media and to advertising.

We’ve developed a persona: We’ve developed a Facebook page that is dedicated to “Libby” and her adventures going across the United States and what she is going to encounter during tax season. We also have a traditional Facebook page where people can ask questions and we can post tax tips. Building the friend base has been very easy. People are interested, especially during tax time. Everybody has to file taxes, so you have a ready-made base of people who are seeking information, and we’ve found a fun way to do it through the interaction on the social media sites. And it has been very successful for us so far.

Tax preparation is a very personal service, and communicating on a one-on-one basis is far more meaningful to our customers than mass media advertising.

What lessons have you learning along the way in regards to social media?

One lesson we’ve learned is that you need to have a solid background in what your strategy is and how you’re going to implement it. I think you can hurt yourself very easily by going out onto Facebook or Twitter and not understanding what the rules of engagement are. You can kill your image as quickly as you can build your image if you don’t respect those parameters.

When we started, we were dabbling in it and didn’t really have a firm grasp of what we should be doing. I think we made some wise decisions by getting help from people who understood the space and could make some recommendations on how we should move forward. I feel really comfortable with where we are now with our social media presence, because we are moving through the environment in a way that is not only proper, but also fun and inviting for the people who are participating on our sites.

How have you leveraged your employment brand to grow your business? Why is this important to you?

It may sound cliché, but we have a group of advocates out in the marketplace, in virtually every DMA in the country who really love Liberty Tax Service, and who love working for Liberty Tax Service. So we’ve got this band of advocates who are out there singing our praises. Just last weekend I was at an office and there was a waver out on the street, and we had three separate people walk in and say, “How do I get that cool job? I’d like to have that job.” It’s rewarding and gratifying, but it also lets you know that people are noticing us and they understand what it means to be part of Liberty Tax Service. We’re just doing an outstanding job of recruiting the right people, showing them the right way to do business, and they in turn tell everybody they know.

I would have to start with our CEO, John Hewitt. John is the consummate workaholic. He is constantly striving for betterment: both betterment of the company and giving the people who work within the company the opportunity to continue to grow and to achieve. His leadership, wisdom and vision are paramount to the success of our company. We like to call him the granddaddy of the industry. His wealth of experience and knowledge is unsurpassed in the income tax industry and in business circles in general.

Then I would have to use the franchisees, collectively, as our second group of people who propelled Liberty Tax Service to where we are today. We’ve got, I think, an unusual group of franchisees. Our franchisees are very entrepreneurial and are constantly bringing us all kinds of great ideas. And they bring them to the table with passion and understanding of what it’s like to be out in the field and on the front lines with the customers. They’re all just very, very motivated and really love what they are doing: They’re the kind of people that you want to hang out with.

What other advice would you share through this piece?

My advice to anyone who is looking to start a business or to re-engineer their business is to look outside of what you know. Just because this is the way that we’ve always done it doesn’t mean that’s the way that it always needs to be done. And that applies to virtually any business – whether it’s manufacturing, retail, science, or anything – because if you don’t look for a different way of doing things, you’re going to get the same results you’ve always gotten.

John likes to say, “If you do what you always did, then you’re going to get what you always got.” Another one of our principles is to break boundaries. You have to take those risks. You have to be able to steel yourself and say, “Okay, I’ve never done this before, but now I’m going to figure out how to do it and here’s the goal that we’re going after.”

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About Liberty Tax Service

Liberty Tax Service is the fastest growing retail tax preparation company in the industry’s history. Founded in 1997 by CEO John T. Hewitt, Liberty Tax Service has prepared over 7,000,000 individual income tax returns. Liberty Tax Service provides computerized income tax preparation, electronic filing and online filing through eSmart Tax. Each office offers customers audit assistance, a money back guarantee and free tax return checking. The Liberty Tax Service franchise opportunity is #9 on the fastest growing franchises list of the 2010 Entrepreneur “Franchise 500.” For more information on Liberty Tax visit www.libertytax.com

There’s etiquette for many things in life, from bathroom use (put the toilet seat down after you use it), to public transportation (don’t clip your toenails or demonstrate your newest yoga moves on a crowded train), to, uh, fashion. However, we all have different opinions on what the proper etiquette is for any given situation (see toilet seat example).

Despite our differing opinions, it’s helpful to have a base of etiquette from which to start. As an employer, you need to know how to play nicely in the online space. Learning the difference between good online etiquette – and lack thereof – will help you avoid the backlash from candidates and even your own employees. With this in mind, we’re offering a few tips and guidelines to start your company on the right track in your social media interactions (or get you back on track).

Everyone’s Doing It

Well, yeah, that may be true – or at least it’s starting to seem that way. Even President Obama has (technically) sent his first “tweet,” via The American Red Cross Twitter account. If you’re still wondering how and when to jump into the social media waters, read our posts on Ten Steps to Getting Started with Social Media and our Top 10 Best Practices for Using Social Media as a Recruitment Tool.

11 Social Media Etiquette Guidelines to Keep in Mind:

1. Be aware.
Be cognizant of everything going on around you in the online space. Set up Google alerts about your company, stay on top of sites like Facebook and Twitter, and pay attention to blog comments. What is your company’s reputation in the online space? Do you know? You should know what people are saying about you as soon as it happens.

2.  Own up to your mistakes — and address them.
Businesses make mistakes, but with news spreading on sites like Twitter mere seconds after an event occurs, more important than the mistakes themselves is often how a business handles the resolution — in other words, how they reach out and communicate the issue to the public.

After two Domino’s pizza employees were charged with delivering prohibited food after posting their actions on YouTube, the President of Domino’s USA, Patrick Doyle, responded quickly and spoke candidly with his own video. A temporary Twitter account, @dpzinfo, was created to address concerns, interact, thank customers, and help to rebuild the company’s reputation post-scandal. Currently, the new @dominos Twitter account is very active and engaged.

3. Don’t write anything you wouldn’t want broadcast to the universe.
Because by posting in the Internet, well, that’s essentially what you’re doing. Refrain from posting anything that you wouldn’t want your candidates, employees, mother, father, kids, or boss to read; remember, as an employee representing your company — or as someone communicating directly as your company spokesperson — everything you do and say reflects on the business. Employers may be more notorious for complaining about their employers, but there are plenty of things higher-ups can do to cause controversy and trouble in the online space.

4. Transparency is key.
Speaking of controversy in the online space, it’s vital to be up-front about your intentions and transparent about who you are when interacting via social media sites (or anywhere, for that matter). Take the example of Honda manager of product planning, Eddie Okubo, who wrote about the Honda Crosstour on Honda’s Facebook page as if he wasn’t involved with Honda himself. He not only suffered backlash from others, but he represented Honda unfairly, creating a negative situation for the company and forcing them to take action.

5. Play in your own sandbox.
The “write what you know” adage definitely applies here. Be current, relevant, and relay company news and ideas in a tone that’s comfortable for your business. Find your own voice, and speak to the things your business knows and is passionate about.  The best way to be interesting and garner followers is to be interesting yourself. Offer original content, respond to others’ comments and questions, and share ideas. And hey — have fun while you’re at it! Social media is meant to encourage relationships — while you should use best judgment, it’s not a prison sentence.

6. Respect others.
It should go without saying, but don’t ever use racial or ethnic slurs, slam others with personal insults and obscenities or engage in conduct that would not be acceptable in the workplace or anywhere else. Remember to be considerate of other people’s sensitivities to certain topics like politics or religion, too.

7. Don’t talk about the competition.
Rather than be negative about your competitors, focus on your company’s positives and work on building relationships with candidates, employees, and customers by your own merits. There’s no need to bash another company; it only makes your company appear petty and defensive — and it may turn people off to your business.

8. Don’t pick fights.
If you see your company represented in an unfavorable light, disagree with someone’s opinion, or think a member of the media, an analyst or a blogger has misrepresented your company, do not get defensive. Check with your leadership to see what their response is, if any.  If they choose not to respond, but give you the OK to do so, be factual and respectful in your response.

9. Keep private information private.
Keep internal e-mail, documents and information confidential. Include a disclaimer when necessary. Remember that public blogs are just that: public. Don’t use a public forum as an intranet.

10. Teach your own employees about social media. As Cristóbal Conde, president and CEO of SunGard, points out in a recent New York Times article, everyone in a company has access to information now; not just leadership. That shouldn’t stop at social media. After all, your employees are likely tweeting and Facebooking away anyway, so it makes sense to get everyone on the same page, encourage learnings and knowledge about best practices, and also make employees aware of any social media policies you have as a company.

“While the decision to post videos, pictures, thoughts, experiences, and observations to social networking sites is personal, a single act can create far-reaching ethical consequences for individuals as well as organizations,” said Sharon Allen of Deloitte. “Therefore, it is important for executives to be mindful of the implications and to elevate the discussion about the risks associated with it to the highest levels of leadership.”

11. Think before you hit “post.”
Bottom line: Before commenting in a public forum, remember that you are representing your company. Join online groups on social or professional networking sites with care, and use your head. The rest will fall into place.

Additional resources to check out:

• Twitter has created a great guide called Twitter 101 for Business; this is a helpful starting point for new Twitter users, or a useful way to brush up on your company’s current Twitter use. Pass it around the office.

• Don’t know how to create a social media policy, or need ideas on what’s right for your particular company culture? See the social media policies of over 100 other companies on Social Media Governance.

Any social media etiquette tips to add to the list?